The 146th Installment
Envisioning Future with Our Will

by Shinji Takashima,
Professor

What do you think the difference between “Mirai” and “Shorai” is? (Both words can be translated as “future” in English)

Some say that "Shorai" refers to the nearer future than "Mirai".

Others believe that "Mirai" is an objective future, while "Shorai" is a subjective future.

When you talk about your future career or dream, you probably say, "I want to be a ... in the future (Shorai)," or "I want to do ... in the future (Shorai)," don't you?

Therefore, I believe that "Shorai" focuses on a subjective future, in other words, it contains the will of the people.

Planning and designing sometimes require predictions about the future.

Envisioning the future is especially important when there is a lead time to implement a plan or design. For example, if it takes two to four years to develop a car, the product planner and designer must envision the world three to four years ahead of the time when the product will be released. Otherwise, times will have changed by the time the product is unveiled. If you release a product that does not meet consumer demand, you are missing a business opportunity, wasting development costs, and jeopardizing your company's survival.

I classify future predictions into three categories: "short-term future predictions" for the next 3 to 5 years, "medium-term future predictions" for the next 6 to 10 years, and "long-term future predictions" for the next 11 to 15 years.

There are no strict roles for this classification. Honestly, nobody knows what the future will be.

However, even if it is not possible to accurately "predict" the future, it is crucial for planning and designing activities to "envision" the future, identify problems under the envisioned conditions, and materialize solutions.

Many people envision the future using business management methods such as 3C and SWOT, but I analyze facts and events by classifying them into "Heaven," "Earth", "People", "They" and "We".

"Heaven" refers to trends and issues that cannot be decided by your own business or company, including laws, governmental systems or policy plans, and climate changes such as global warming.

“Earth” refers to general social trends and issues such as the declining birthrate, aging population and labor shortages, as well as trends/issues surrounding the industry of your business or company and the people you are targeting. In the automotive industry, these include trends toward electrification and automated driving.

"People" refers to changes, trends and issues in lifestyles, values, and preferences. This is part of the social trends, but I classify it separately as “People”.

"They" refers to trends (including current situation and future strategy) of competitors of your company or of your target customers. Here, it is difficult to determine who the competitors are. For example, the competitor for automated driving or camper van may not be the car industry but the hotel industry.

Finally, “We” means the strengths and weaknesses of you and your company. Today, this is an important factor in identifying what you cannot do alone and determining who you can work with to make it happen.

I divide these data into short term, medium term and long term, in light of demand and supply.

Since most of the data I collect are facts and events, it is natural that I find less information about the distant future. The farther I look into the future, the more likely it is that the unpredictable will happen. Sudden events, such as natural disasters and epidemics, cannot be foreseen. In addition, now that we live in an uncertain and complex world known as VUCA, there are limitations to how we can imagine the future.

Consequently, we need another perspective to see the future. This is the perspective of “Shorai”. In other words, “will”. That is “Where do I want to see myself? How are people and the nature supposed to be?”

We can expect a degree of accuracy in our vision of the near future because we have a lot of data available, and based on that vision, we can think about what we want to, or should, be. In contrast, our vision of the distant future depends more on our will.

The purpose of envisioning the future in this way, however, is to improve our ability to grasp more precisely what we want to, or should, be. Therefore, it is crucial to determine our will for the future based on facts and events from reliable sources as much as possible, not depending on speculative information from magazine articles or other unreliable sources.

I don’t have enough space to explain fully the next step, how to create a plan and a design. If you are interested in, please do not hesitate to contact me.

takashima-s[at]aiit.ac.jp (replace [at] with @ when you send me an e-mail.)

In any case, we cannot create our future without defining our will of what we want to do with our future. Then we backcast, “What should we do to make it happen?” This is the design thinking.

What do you want your future to be?

To desire it, to materialize ideas and technologies that make it possible, and to install them in society. That is “innovation”.

Let each of our wills allow us to cooperate with each other to realize a happy future!